MY TEAM WILL NEVER BETRAY ME AGAIN

Chapter 12: Under the Lens

"Unauthorized hardware," Deputy Director Vance repeated, the words tasting like something foul he wished he could spit out. "That is a very specific accusation to level against a fellow student, cadet Sterling."

Priya kept her chin up, though her eyes darted briefly toward James before snapping back to the administrator's desk. "It’s not an accusation, sir, it’s an observation. No squad in our tier clears a tactical sweep in four minutes without external optimization. Look at their metrics. It’s mathematically absurd."

"And yet," Vance said, tapping a polished metal stylus against his datapad, "our forensic sweep of the arena returned zero anomalies. No dampeners, no boosters, no neural relays." He leaned forward, casting a cold gaze across the polished mahogany of his office toward James. "Which leaves us with a far more interesting administrative puzzle. How did a collection of academic castaways dismantle the top-ranked tactical unit in the region?"

James didn't flinch. "We trained, Director."

"Trained," Vance echoed, the word dripping with quiet skepticism. "Of course. The great equalizer. Tell me, cadet Carter, when did your support-class ability suddenly acquire the capacity to rewrite a squad's baseline latency?"

"My ability is what it has always been," James said evenly. "If the elite squad couldn't adapt, that's a failure of their preparation, not our hardware."

Priya scoffed, taking half a step forward. "You were dead weight six weeks ago, James. Everyone knew it. You couldn't even anchor a basic three-man push without—"

"That's enough, cadet Sterling," Vance interrupted, raising a single finger without looking at her. He stood up, walking slowly toward the reinforced glass window that overlooked the central academy courtyard. "The Academy has a reputation to maintain. When a squad of non-entities humiliates our top-tier prospects on a live feed, questions are asked by the regional board. People wonder about standards. People look for scapegoats."

"If you're going to expel us, just say it," James said, his voice dropping an octave.

Vance turned slowly, a thin, humorless smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Expulsion is so messy, James. It creates paperwork. It invites appeals. I prefer administrative corrections." He tapped his datapad again, the screen casting a pale blue glow across his tailored collar. "I am placing your team under mandatory diagnostic review. Effective immediately. You will report to the biometrics lab every morning at zero five hundred for full neurological profiling."

"Profiling," James said, stepping slightly closer to the desk. "You want to tear my nervous system apart to see how the Bond Link functions."

"I want to protect the integrity of this institution," Vance corrected smoothly. "You have twenty-four hours to sign the compliance waiver. Dismissed."

James didn't move. "And if we refuse?"

Vance’s smile vanished completely, replaced by a look of absolute, bureaucratic finality. "Then your provisional licenses are revoked, your team is dissolved, and you spend the rest of your academic careers cleaning grease traps in the sub-basement. Good day, cadets."

The heavy oak doors of the deputy director's office clicked shut behind them with a sharp, final sound.

In the dim corridor outside, four figures stood waiting against the cold stone wall. Mia looked up first, her arms crossed tight over her chest, eyes sharp.

"Well?" she asked, not bothering to lower her voice. "Are we expelled, or do we just have to assassinate him?"

"Neither," James said, exhaling a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He looked down the hall, seeing Noah nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Lena leaning quietly against a concrete pillar with her arms loose, and Ethan staring down the corridor as if daring anyone to approach them. "They want to run diagnostics. Full neurological profiling."

"They want to harvest your capability," Lena said quietly, pushing off the pillar. Her voice had the flat, hard edge of someone who had spent too many years dealing with municipal bureaucracy. "If Vance gets those scan results, he'll classify Bond Link as a restricted asset. They'll chain you to a lab bench and rent out your coordination to the highest-bidding guild in Oakhaven."

"We're not signing," Noah said immediately, his voice cracking slightly before he cleared his throat and forced it steady. "Right? We're not doing that."

"We aren't signing anything," James agreed, looking from Noah to Mia, then to Lena and Ethan. "Which means we just put ourselves on the Academy's blacklist. Vance won't wait for us to fail. He'll manufacture a reason to strip our standing before the regional trials next week."

"Let him try," Ethan muttered, cracking his knuckles with a dull, rhythmic pop. "We survived his elite squad in four minutes. We can survive a desk jockey."

"It's not just Vance anymore," Priya’s voice cut sharply through the dim hallway as she stepped out of a nearby alcove, her face pale and tight. She had followed them out, her hands trembling slightly at her sides.

James turned slowly, his expression hardening as he looked at his former teammate. "What do you want, Priya?"

"I want to tell you that you're making a catastrophic mistake," she said, taking a step forward before stopping herself, realizing the four members of James's new team were all watching her with identical, unblinking hostility. She swallowed hard, keeping her voice low. "Vance isn't just acting on his own authority. The regional scouts are already pulling their sponsorship money from the upper tiers because of your match. They're terrified of what you are."

"Good," Mia said coldly. "Let them be terrified."

"You don't understand," Priya snapped, her composure cracking for a fraction of a second. "They aren't just going to ban you from the trials. They're going to blackball every single one of you from the hero registry permanently. You won't just leave this school; you won't ever legally throw a punch or use an ability outside of a fenced-in yard for the rest of your lives."

James stared at her, noticing the frantic, desperate twitch in her left eye—the exact same micro-tell she always got when she realized a simulation was failing and she had no backup plan. The thin, scarred-over energetic thread connecting them deep within his awareness thrummed once, faintly, asking for a lifeline that no longer existed.

"You came all the way out here just to deliver Vance's warning?" James asked, his voice entirely devoid of warmth.

"I came to tell you that I tried to talk sense into them," Priya said, her voice dropping into something that sounded almost like a plea. "If you give Vance the data he wants—if you let them regulate the link—I can probably get the disciplinary committee to reinstate your old position. We can rebuild the squad, James. The real squad."

Noah let out a short, sharp bark of laughter that had no humor in it whatsoever. "Rebuild? With you?"

Lena didn't even look at her, staring instead at the ceiling as if waiting for rain. "Some people don't know how to stand unless someone else is holding them up."

Priya flushed red, turning her anger back toward James. "You're throwing your future away for people who couldn't even pass a baseline aptitude test six weeks ago! Look at them, James! They're dead weight!"

"They're my team," James said.

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. With a subtle, deliberate focus of his attention, he reached inward, past the static of the hallway, past the lingering ghost of their old partnership, and deliberately severed the very last, frayed thread of the residual bond connecting him to Priya.

It snapped with a microscopic psychic shockwave that only he could feel—a clean, surgical break that left nothing behind but empty space.

Priya staggered half a step back, her hand flying to her chest as if she had been physically struck. Her breath hitched, her eyes widening in sudden, irrational panic as the familiar, comforting hum of James's passive coordination vanished from her awareness entirely, leaving her feeling utterly hollowed out.

"What... what did you do?" she whispered, staring at him as if he had suddenly turned into a stranger.

"I finished cleaning house," James said. He turned his back on her, motioning to the rest of his squad. "Come on. We're going back to the shed. We have preparation to finish."

As James walked down the corridor, flanked by the four people who had chosen to stand with him, his phone buzzed sharply in his pocket. He pulled it out while walking, glancing down at the screen.

An alert flashed across the display from an unknown regional identifier: an encrypted message containing a formal invitation to the Silt & Iron Guild Selection Trials in Oakhaven, bypassing Academy clearance entirely.

Beneath the message, a second notification popped up instantly: Account balance updated. Administrative restriction applied to all student stipends.

Noah glanced over James's shoulder, his face going pale as he read the notification. "They just cut our funding. Every last credit. How are we even going to get to the regional capital?"

James locked his phone, sliding it back into his pocket with a quiet click, his stride never breaking.

"We walk," James said.